Van der Zande: IMSA Win Boost to CGR’s Le Mans Momentum

The recent victory at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca for Chip Ganassi Racing’s No. 3 crew served as an important momentum boost heading towards the 24 Hours of Le Mans after a troubled start to the season according to Renger van der Zande.

Van der Zande, driving alongside Sebastien Bourdais, came out on top in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship round in May. It marked the first time the gold-liveried Cadillac V-Series.R took a race win so far this year.

The Dutchman told Sportscar365 that the strong result helped boost the team’s spirits after they endured a tough opening phase of the season.

Among the team’s setbacks was a retirement from the race lead with mechanical trouble at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.

Van der Zande also crashed heavily due to mechanical failure at the FIA World Endurance Championship round at Spa-Francorchamps, which was meant to serve as preparation for the French endurance classic.

“One thing is for sure: we needed that win in Laguna because we’ve been through a very bad period,” Van der Zande told Sportscar365.

“If you look back, Sebring was the DNF because something happened, then Long Beach there was a crash before Turn 1 and I didn’t even drive the car.

“Then we had Spa with a fire in practice and a rebuild on the car. We had the crash and completely destroyed the car in Spa in the race.

“We also had the Laguna Seca practice crash that set us back. We were looking at each other like, ‘What the hell is going on here? We’re just having so much bad luck.’

“So then finally winning that race on Sunday, it just bumped us all up, we didn’t expect that.

“I just said before the race, let’s do P3 or P4 and we’re happy to finish the race now, because we’re so far down the road with our luck.

“If that happens, I’m already happy, but then we won the race and we overachieved there a bit on the luck that we had before.”

As previously reported by Sportscar365, Van der Zande’s Spa accident prompted CGR to press its full-season WeatherTech Championship chassis into service at Le Mans after it originally planned to keep it stateside for the duration of the U.S. campaign.

“The nice thing is we have a race winning car here in Le Mans,” Van der Zande said.

“The bad thing is we obviously didn’t want to do that, because also in a few weeks from now it’s already Watkins Glen.

“But yeah, it’s the car from Laguna Seca and it was not supposed to be that car.”

Bamber: Le Mans “Good Moment to Start Peaking” for Cadillac

A pair of U.S.-based cars, one from Chip Ganassi Racing and one from Action Express Racing, joins the full-season FIA World Endurance Championship car to form a three-car entry

Earl Bamber, sharing the No. 2 Cadillac with Alex Lynn and Richard Westbrook, stated that the WEC crew should be capable of scoring a strong result having gathered experience over the previous three races.

“To be honest, we’ve had a few teething problems but generally I think they’ve done a great job,” said Bamber.

“We had a good endurance test in Portugal as well. It was one of our first performance tests as well in Europe with the new team.

“I think with the team that we’ve got on the No. 2 car, I feel we’re at a good moment to start peaking.

“We’ve had a couple of races to find our feet. I feel we’ve thrown away the podium twice through some procedural stuff, through full course yellow speed and stuff like that.

“If you consider we’re fourth in the championship, I would say we probably should be third. It was all perfect.

“We’re moving in the right way and trying to fight and catch up. If everything goes our way we can definitely be on the podium.”